


The closest to heaven that he'll ever be

by WanderingWanda



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien got his Miraculous before Marinette, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M, Gabriel is Hawk Moth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 14:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5543873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingWanda/pseuds/WanderingWanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chat Noir is supposed to steal some earrings for his father. No big deal when you've got powers, right? Except that he really is a lame thief and that the girl he comes across is probably braver than him.</p><p>For a prompt: Awkward first meeting themed #7. “You found me hanging by my fingertips from your window and I don’t want to tell you iI was trying to rob you but idk how else to explain this and i don’t want to go to jail and also you’re kind of cute we should make out when i’m not clinging onto your window ledge for my life"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The closest to heaven that he'll ever be

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Marichat fic, I'm feeling emotional.  
> As usual, the title comes from a song: "Iris" by Goo Goo Dolls.  
> French being my first language, there are probably some mistakes here and there, I apologize!  
> Bonne lecture !

Chat Noir was a lousy thief.

One could have thought that with his agility, his night vision and his strength, he would have been the best robber in the whole city. However, there was something that was missing: his heart.

Not literally: his organ was still beating inside his chest with the vigor of a young man. But Chat Noir took no pleasure in stealing. It was something that he was pretty much forced to do. How could he have said no to his own father?

Since he had acquired his ring, his father had sent him in missions to find another Miraculous. Those were red earrings with black spots, his father had explained. He didn’t say much more. Gabriel Agreste wasn’t one to share his secrets, not even with his only son. And if Adrien wasn’t usable, he could put Chat Noir to work, while he stayed in the shadows.

Gabriel’s research had led him to believe that the earrings were in the possession of the baker’s family. Chat Noir didn’t question him. When his father had told him “Go get them”, he went.

Chat Noir was a lousy thief, and that’s why he found himself hanging by his fingertips from the balcony linked to the girl’s room. He had been surprised by the black ice covering the guardrail and had slipped. Falling from this height wouldn’t have been dangerous for him: his suit prevented any serious injury and he was sure he would have landed on his feet, like a cat. Nevertheless, he had let a surprised cry escape his lips as he had grabbed the guardrail with his gloved hands. For what seemed to be an eternity, he didn’t move.

He had chosen to take action in the middle of the night, when he merged into the darkness as the street was at its most peaceful hour. The baker’s family wasn’t there today, he made sure of that: they went to have dinner with friends, a few hours ago, and they were supposed to stay at their place for the night. Chat Noir might be a bad thief, but he did his homework.

Still, he was scared that someone, a neighbor maybe, had heard his manly cry and had decided to see what was going on. He had never sought confrontation. He was a creature who went out after twilight, always running from the eyes of anyone. He wasn’t prepared to face anybody. And of course, what he was not prepared for had to hit him like a train at its full speed.

“What are you doing exactly? I’m calling the police!”

A flash of light illuminated him as a girl rushed out of her room. He screwed up his eyes. Without his cat-like vision, he would have had a hard time distinguishing her features because of the black lightning. Her bright blue eyes were fixated on his masked face and were wide open. Her raven black hair wasn’t tied like it was used to be and fell on her frail shoulders, covered by a peignoir.

Chat Noir tried to dazzle her with a smile. He hadn’t seen the dictionary that she was carrying, but his fingers sure felt it. The pain was so sudden. He shouted in the silence of the night. Talk about discretion.

“Wait, wait, wait!” he cried out as the girl was raising the heavy book over her head again, with the intention to smash his fingers. “I can explain!”

Her arms were trembling with the weight of the dictionary, but she didn’t hit him.

This was bad, disastrous. The girl (he had heard her parents calling her Marinette, when he first scouted the place, right?) wasn’t supposed to be there. She was supposed to be out with her parents. His logic was flawed, but Chat Noir didn’t care: he had wanted first to search for the Miraculous in the house, even though there was still the possibility that Marinette or her mother were wearing it. In this case, he couldn’t avoid the confrontation. He wanted to count on his luck, but coming from a black cat, it was stupidly naive.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” she asked, and he could hear something under her cool composure. Fear. He was scarring her. Oh, damn.

His arms were starting to hurt. Swiftly, he used the strength given by his suit to sit on the guardrail. Instinctively, Marinette stepped back, her dictionary on her chest, like a shield. Her expression was mistrustful, her eyes were scanning him as if it would help her understand his motives. For the first time, he noticed that the tip of her nose was red, her eyes a bit glassy, and her skin paler than usual. So that was why she didn’t go with her parents.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Chat Noir said. He decided to stay away from her, not wanting to frighten her more than he already had. But how could he explain his presence here? “I’m…,” everything seemed lame. His brain decided to stop cooperating with him. His mouth was dry. She was now holding her dictionary closer to her chest, and her hands were shaking. “I’m… Trying to steal something from you, but you weren’t supposed to be here tonight. Bummer, I guess. But no money! It’s… I’m looking for earrings, okay? Red with black dots, like a ladybug. Do you have them?”

He seemed to vomit the words. He couldn’t stop talking, and they came out without him even thinking about them and their meaning.

Her reaction was even more surprising to him than his diatribe. She laughed. A lot. It broke into the night, loud enough for some neighbors to turn on the lights and open their window to see what was going on. Horrified, Chat Noir could only tell her to hush, still not daring to get too close to her. Marinette covered her mouth with her dictionary, but tears were running down her face and her cheeks were as red as her nose.

“S-sorry,” she hiccoughed. “But-but you’re so _lame_!”

Now he was just offended.

“You come here to steal from us in this costume? You have a bell, that’s so not discreet! Cat ears? And… Even a tail? You’re into some weird kink!”

She blinked a few times, seeming more surprised than him by her words. Chat Noir was blushing furiously, his face brighter than a tomato.

“That’s-that’s not nice!” He stuttered like a third grade boy. “My costume is cool, Princess. And geez, I’m not some kind of weirdo! I’m a super hero!”

She pulled herself together quickly enough to retort: “Yeah, sure. Trying to steal from a teenage girl. Much heroism.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t object to that. For the first time in months, Chat Noir felt a twinge of guilt and shame. He used to complain about his father’s lack of paternal love. He thought that he would gain at least his approval after doing his dirty work for him. Plagg had told him that most of the previous Chats Noirs were heroes, but only him could chose what he wanted to do with the powers of the ring. The path was his to discover. Adrien didn’t have much time to think about it: his father had caught him when he had transformed for the first time and had asked him to find the earrings with his powers. At first, Adrien had been overjoyed, for he thought that his father was finally seeing him. But he was wrong: his father was only obsessed with the powered jewelry, and hardly cared about his son’s free will and well being.

And now, he was trying to steal from a sick girl in the middle of the night. He wanted to hide his face in shame.

“Why the gloomy look, kitten?”

Could he sense a hint of worry? Since she had apparently decided that he wasn’t dangerous, she looked more curious than angry. “We don’t have earrings like that here,” she added and pointed at her ears. Her jewelry was black. “Why are you looking for those earrings? You kinda owe me an explanation, at least.”

“I don’t know,” he murmured, scratching his head without daring to look at her. “I’m just doing what I’m told.”

Marinette raised an eyebrow. Under her persistent gaze, Chat Noir felt small again. His suit didn’t seem to make him invincible anymore.

“So you’re using your “powers” for bad reasons?”

“Hey, I can sense your quotation marks. I do have powers, thank you very much.”

She placed her dictionary on her table and moved forward. This time, Chat Noir was the one who wanted to step back, but he could feel the cold guardrail against his back. She was studying him with those big, big eyes of hers, only a few centimeters away.

“You’re avoiding the question”, she remarked softly. “You don’t look like someone who likes stealing, uh? Why are you obeying someone else’s orders?”

She was too close, way too close. He wasn’t ready for such a confrontation. So he did what he did best: run away.

“Alas, I’m needed elsewhere, Princess!” he proclaimed dramatically. “I have to leave you. See you next time!” He winked, even though he felt like he was going to pass out in a minute, and ran away.

The entire time, he swore he could feel her stare on him.

 

 

Adrien told his father that the Dupain-Chengs didn’t have the Miraculous. He was furious, of course, but there was nothing he could do about that. So he sent his son to look after it. During the day, Adrien modeled, took several classes like Chinese and fencing. During the night, Chat Noir was searching for his father’s Holy Grail.

Two weeks after his luckless theft attempt, he found himself on Marinette’s balcony. He had passed over the bakery a few times during the last weeks, more than he should have, but it was the first time he had seen her outside. She was drawing under the light of a small pink lamp. Unlike last time, she was wearing a big and warm sweatshirt and her complexion was shiny and healthy.

“Still no dotted earrings, sorry!” she said in a playful tone when she saw him. For the first time, Chat Noir noticed how pretty Marinette was.

Not that it was useful information.

He didn’t really know how it had happened, but he found himself several other times on her balcony, always at night, always as Chat Noir, while he was supposed to be working for his father. He told himself that it was okay, because she was the one inviting him to stay. She was really interested by his “superhero” life. He couldn’t tell her much, because revealing his identity would put his father’s in danger. There was no way she hadn’t heard about Gabriel Agreste, especially since she wanted to become a designer, and he had let slip that the one ordering him was a relative. So he stayed cryptic. To be honest, he was more interested about her life: Marinette was a normal girl, who went to a normal school, who had normal hobbies. For a boy who had been homeschooled during his whole life, it was fascinating hearing about Marinette’s struggles with the education system, the other students, her boring classes and her incompetent teachers. It was like discovering a brand new world that had always been under his fingers, but that he had never dared to touch. Sometimes, they didn’t talk at all. He would simply watch her draw. He would observe her hand as it would move swiftly her pencil, her tongue that stuck out when she was focused, the curve of her small wrinkled nose when she didn’t like her sketches.

Chat Noir considered Marinette to be his first real friend. He didn’t know why she appeared to enjoy his company, but he wasn’t going to complain. As someone who had always been lonely, he realized that he didn’t like solitude. They shared an unlikely friendship — the masked guy who had tried to rob the feisty girl —, but a friendship nevertheless.

Sure, Chat Noir found himself sometimes staring at her pink lips. But it was because she was really attractive, and he was a teenage boy who wasn’t used to be around people his age. So what if he sometimes fancied what it was like to kiss her. It was normal. Platonic friendship, right?

Plus, Marinette didn’t think about him that way, so it was pointless to imagine scenarios where they were something else. At times, she looked annoyed at his flirting— _platonically_!—and his lame puns. But she was always nice to him, and he found her brighter than the sun.

One day however, Marinette was looking rather down. When he landed next to her, she didn’t pay attention to him. Instead, she kept staring at her clenched fists on her lap. Chat Noir remarked that tonight she wasn’t wearing her earrings—he remarked a lot of details like that on her now, perhaps because he was trying to become more observant, or something like that.  
   
“Something on your mind, Princess?”

She didn’t look at him when she answered with a question, “What would you do if there wasn’t this… Person for whom you have to work? What would you do, with your powers?”

He wasn’t expecting that. He sat next to her, the proximity not being a problem for them anymore. “Why are you asking?”

It took her a moment to talk and lift her head. Their eyes met. Hers reflected the doubts that were eating her from the inside. Chat Noir couldn’t know what his reflected, but he was sure that the answer would be embarrassing for him.

“Today,” she explains unhurriedly while the wind was messing with her untied hair, “I took the metro. There were a lot of people, and some man started beating another younger man, without a reason. He was helpless and begging him to stop, but he didn’t.”

Her eyes where now looking at the starless night. The air smelt like rain, but when Marinette moved, Chat Noir swore he could smell a faint scent of cinnamon and apple. Or maybe it was all in his head.

“And you know what’s worse?” she continued, her voice suddenly firmer, more passionate. “No one moved. There were plenty of people, but no one moved. I… I couldn’t stand it. I tried to interfere, but a woman stopped me, saying that I was foolish and couldn’t do anything against an adult.”

 Her mouth twisted in disgust, but not at the woman’s words. She was disgusted by her inaction, Chat Noir comprehended. Impulsively, he grasped her cold hand on her lap. A blush crept over her cheeks, but she squeezed his hand in return.

“I want to do something,” she murmured, her free hand touching her ears absentmindedly. “I think I can do something.”

And this time, when their eyes met, he saw nothing but determination. His heart started pounding strangely on his rib cage, a tingling in his toes, a warm feeling in his body.

As if it was the most natural thing to do, he leant over Marinette. When their lips met, the first thing he noticed was that he was right about the scent. The second thing he noticed was that his brain had just melted and his heart had exploded into a million pieces. It was a bit awkward. He had never kissed anyone before, and he didn’t know what to do. Marinette was obviously more experimented here: she ran her fingers through his hair, making him shiver. After a too brief moment, she pulled his head back, making her out of reach. He tried to kiss her again, but she teased him with small kisses on the corner of his mouth and his top lips, leaving him craving for more. She looked at him under her coal black eyelashes with a smile when she decided to put him out of his misery. Her hot breath was enough to warm his body and her hands on his shoulders were the only things keeping him on earth.

It felt like an eternity. A blissful, delicious eternity. But when it had to end, Chat Noir knew he wanted it to be a part of his routine. He could get used to it.

 

 

A few days later, a masked girl with a ladybug themed suit prevented an accident on the road. The same day, she had saved a young girl from falling off the Pont des Arts.

Gabriel had instantly recognized the Miraculous he had been searching for years. He sent his son in the middle of the day, cancelling a photo shoot, to steal the earrings. Adrien didn’t say anything. After all, it was an excuse to see his Princess— _no, his Lady, now_. 

And when he saw her smile brightly at him, her masked face recognizable amongst a thousand, he wondered if he could become a good superhero, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't know how to write kisses, I'm sorry, this is so awkward. And if Gabriel Agreste is not Hawk Moth, I will look like an idiot. But, oh well, since it's an AU...


End file.
